A few weeks ago in the studio there was an overwhelming need to let grief for the world permeate the work. A near-complete diptych underwent an aggression; the panels were drowned, scrubbed, and sandpapered. The two paintings on show emerged from this chaos.

Layers of carefully worked textures survived, and form part of the current aerial landscapes. The situation called for rawness and restraint in palate and image. The birds are present both as themselves, that is, real animals, and as symbols of the soul, freedom and migration. A reminder nature knows no borders and feels as one. Body imprints made with the artist’s braids in Untitled (red song 2) speak of the territorialised body, but also act as intimate reminders of softness and the domestic.

The red lines, the only colour in an otherwise monochrome world, are both songs and string figures (a simple string loop used by various indigenous communities, all over the world, to tell stories). Part of the artists’ ongoing research, string figures provide ‘infinite’ narratives out of a ‘finite’ set of circumstances (the loop) and so hold within their structure ideas of hope and change.